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Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon (often shortened to Nick) is an American pay television network which was launched on December 1, 1977 as the first cable channel for children. It is owned by Viacom through its Viacom Media Networks division's Nickelodeon Group unit and is based in New York City. It broadcasts usually from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. on weekdays (the sign off time varies with holidays and special programming), Saturdays from 7:00 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., and Sundays from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. (Eastern and Pacific Time). It is primarily aimed at children and adolescents aged 2–17. The channel was originally first tested as Pinwheel on December 1, 1977. Pinwheel was at the time only available on QUBE, which was the first two-way major market interactive cable television system, owned by Warner Cable. Pinwheel relaunched as "Nick" on April 1, 1979, and expanded to other cable providers nationwide. It was initially commercial-free and remained without advertising until 1984. Warner sold Nickelodeon, along with its sister networks MTV and VH1, to Viacom in 1986. As of September 2018, the channel is available to about 87.167 million households in the United States. History The channel's name comes from the first five cent movie theaters called nickelodeons. Its history dates back to December 1, 1977, when Warner Cable Communications launched the first two-way interactive cable system, QUBE, in Columbus, Ohio. Under the name Pinwheel Network, the C-3 cable channel carried Pinwheel daily from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Nickelodeon launched on April 1, 1979,initially distributed to Warner Cable systems via satellite on the RCA Satcom-1 transponder (the owner of the satellite, RCA Americom, later became GE Americom as a result of General Electric's acquisition of RCA Americom's parent company, RCA Corporation, before merging with Luxembourg based Société Européenne des Satellites to form SES Global, now SES S.A, which one of the descendants of the Satcom series, the SES and AMC satellite constellations, stil operate, Nickelodeon presently broadcasts on AMC-11). Originally commercial-free, advertising was introduced in January 1984. Programming Nickelodeon's schedule currently consists largely of original series aimed at children, pre-teens and young teenagers, including animated series (such as SpongeBob SquarePants, The Loud House, and Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), to live-action comedy and action series (such as Power Rangers, Henry Danger, Knight Squad, along with the month-long running show Hunter Street), as well as series aimed at a younger audience (such as Top Wing, PAW Patrol, Shimmer and Shine, Blaze and the Monster Machines, and Rusty Rivets). It also airs reruns of select original series that have ended their runs (such as iCarly and The Fairly OddParents), as well as occasional original made-for-TV movies. It also aired bi-monthly special editions of Nick News with Linda Ellerbee, a news magazine series aimed at children that debuted in 1992 as a weekly series which ended in 2015. Nicktoons Nicktoons is the branding for Nickelodeon's original animated television series (although it has seldom been used by the network itself since the 2002 launch of the high-tier subscription channel of the same name). Until 1991, the animated series that aired on Nickelodeon were largely imported from foreign countries, and some original animated specials were also featured on the channel up to that point. Original animated series continue to make up a substantial portion of Nickelodeon's lineup, with roughly 6 to 7 hours of these programs airing on the weekday schedule and around nine hours on weekends, including a five-hour weekend morning animation block. Since the late 2000s, after the channel struck a deal with DreamWorks Animation in 2006 to develop the studio's animated films into weekly series,16 the network has also begun to incorporate Nicktoons that use three-dimensional computer animation (such as The Penguins of Madagascar, Fanboy & Chum Chum, and Winx Club) in addition to those that are produced through traditional or digital ink and paint. A new Garfield series is in the works for Nickelodeon. Movies Nickelodeon does not air theatrically released or direct-to-video movies on a regular basis; however, it does produce its own original made-for-TV movies, which usually premiere in weekend evening timeslots or on school holidays. The channel occasionally airs feature films produced by the network's Nickelodeon Movies film production division (whose films are distributed by sister company Paramount Pictures). Although the film division bears the Nickelodeon brand name, the channel does not have access to most of the movies produced by its film unit. Nickelodeon does have broadcast rights to most feature films based on or that served as the basis for original series produced by it (such as Barnyard: The Original Party Animals); the majority of the live-action feature films produced under the Nickelodeon Movies banner are licensed for broadcast by various free-to-air and pay television outlets within the United States other than Nickelodeon (although the network has aired a few live-action Nickelodeon Movies releases such as Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging and Good Burger). Nickelodeon also advertises hour-long episodes of its original series as movies; though the "TV movie" versions of Nickelodeon's original series differ from traditional television films in that they have shorter running times (approximately 45 minutes, as opposed to 75–100 minute run times that most television movies have), and use a traditional multi-camera setup for regular episodes (unless the program is natively shot in the single-camera setup common of films) with some on-location filming. Nickelodeon also periodically acquires theatrically released feature films for broadcast on the channel including Universal's Barbie: A Fashion Fairytale, several Monster High films, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles Forever (which was later released by Nickelodeon Movies through Paramount for DVD release), with the Barbie and Monster High films usually aired under a brokered format in which Mattel purchases the time in order to promote the release of their films on DVD within a few days of the Nickelodeon premiere, an arrangement possible as Nickelodeon does not have to meet the Federal Communications Commission rules which disallow that arrangement for broadcast channels due to regulations disallowing paid programming to children. Programs Broadcast by Nickelodeon Category:Nickelodeon